Dora Carrington was an early 20th century artist. She was connected to the Bloomsbury Set through her relationship with the writer Lytton Strachey.

Romance

Teddy boys picnic … Strachey and Carrington al fresco

Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce) arrives at Charleston in Sussex for a house party. "Who on earth is that ravishing boy?" he murmurs, looking out of the window. It's not a boy at all, but Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson), wearing trousers and a Prince Valiant haircut. So begins the unlikely romance between one of the most openly gay men in Britain at the time, and a bisexual woman. Not that you'd know she was bisexual from this movie – Carrington's affairs with women have been left out. "I wish I'd been a boy," she sighs to Strachey. "You have such lovely ears," he says, and kisses her. She shoves him away, shouting: "Don't! Stop it! Would you mind not!" "Sorry," he mutters. Ah, posh British courtship. For some reason, she's all over him a few scenes later. Perhaps the line about her ears took a while to sink in.

People

Standing as a large, angry obstacle to Carrington and Strachey's relationship is the artist Mark Gertler (Rufus Sewell), who appears to believe that it's his right to have sex with Carrington because he wants to. She prefers Strachey. "But he's just a disgusting pervert!" protests Gertler. "You always have to put up with something," she says. Meanwhile, Strachey attempts to get out of serving in World War I by becoming a conscientious objector. "Would you care to tell us what you would do if you saw a German soldier raping your sister?" asks the military representative on the tribunal. "I believe I should attempt to come between them," replies Strachey, archly. Which is less funny than the real line he came out with, as his biographer has it: "I should try and interpose my own body." Still, the sentiment is accurate. Strachey was eventually disqualified from service on medical grounds.

Sex

Pillow talk … it's all play and no work for Carrington and Partridge

Strachey and Carrington move to the country together. They both take a lover, Ralph Partridge, and Carrington eventually marries him. Then she moves on to her husband's best friend. All of this is more or less as it happened, but soon there is so much tortured bed-hopping and half-stifled jealousy in the film that there's almost nothing else. Much though the Bloomsbury Set and its affiliates are famed for putting it about, they did occasionally do other stuff, such as writing books or painting pictures. Once or twice, Strachey refers offhandedly to his most famous work, Eminent Victorians. Carrington fiddles around with canvases and brushes. Despite powerful performances by Pryce and Thompson, though, the film's blinkered obsession with the sexual neuroses of Strachey and Carrington soon becomes tiresome.

Death

Any last words? … Thompson and Pryce in Carrington

Finally, Strachey, Carrington and their menagerie of lovers move into Ham Spray House in Wiltshire, surely the house with the yuckiest name in England. Maybe Dunroamin was already taken. Amid the opulence, yet more sexual neuroses ensue. By this point, even the most bohemian viewer is probably seeing the virtue of having a nice, sensible, conventional relationship with just one other person. Strachey is soon bedridden with undiagnosed stomach cancer. "If this is dying, I don't think much of it," he snaps, and expires. An accurate quote from the man himself, and some of the best last words in history. Carrington is unable to live without him. She attempts suicide by shooting herself in the heart with a shotgun. The film implies that it worked, rolling credits straight after the gunshot. It didn't. She missed her heart, sustained a horrible wound to her side, and was found by the gardener. Carrington lived for half a day in what must have been awful pain, apologising to her aghast friends through a haze of morphia. So don't try this at home. Really, don't.

Verdict

Blank canvas … Carrington adds minimal colour

Drawing extensively on its subjects' diaries and letters, Carrington is certainly an accurate historical movie – but not a particularly revealing one.